Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Elemental Archangels

4 of 21 entries in Archangels. Click any to see everything it connects to.

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Origin Late nineteenth century, in the rituals of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888.

Elemental Archangels assigns one archangel to each of the four classical elements, a pairing developed mainly in ceremonial magic and modern Wiccan practice. The same archangels carry quite different roles in the older Abrahamic sources they are drawn from, where an elemental assignment is not part of the original material.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingSourced to the subject's own account
The four archangels assigned to the classical elements and to the quarters of the ritual circle: Raphael in the east for Air, Michael in the south for Fire, Gabriel in the west for Water, Uriel in the north for Earth. It is a ritual scheme of Western ceremonial magic; no scripture assigns an archangel to an element. 2
Size of the Traditional SetSourced to the subject's own account
Four: one archangel to each of the four classical elements and quarters. 2
Origins
Origin Period
Late nineteenth century, in the rituals of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888. 3
Whose Classification This Is
The arrangement is the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's, fixed in its ritual and carried into most later Western ritual magic. The order assembled it from earlier printed sources rather than receiving it from a tradition. 4
Directory
Category
Archangels 1
Learn More
The Elemental Archangels

This group gathers the elemental archangels, the four archangels assigned to the classical elements of earth, water, air and fire and to the four directions, most familiar from the ritual of ceremonial magic, where they are called to guard the quarters. The four great archangels of Abrahamic tradition are commonly set in this elemental scheme.

The browser will find the archangels linked to the elements. The entries describe each figure and its element, noting the ceremonial and esoteric tradition from which the arrangement comes.

Sources
2. The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th edition
Israel Regardie, Llewellyn, 1989the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the PentagramView the Source
3. The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923
Ellic Howe, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972On the Sprengel correspondence and the founding of Isis-UraniaView the Source
4. Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition
Alison Butler, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011On the printed sources behind the order's rituals
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